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September 30, 2005– January 14, 2006
Opening Reception Thursday September 29, 6–8 pm
curated by Donald Kuspit
The Body Image in
"Cristóbal GABARRÓN’s Art:
1963-2005
Charged with symbolism, Gabarron’s work is full of insinuating
shapes that produce a sensation of restlessness. His work has its
birth and form in ambiguity challenging the viewer to enter the
piece and make meaning. Much of his imagery is related to the human
figure, His bodies, convoluted, anguished, sexual, mysterious and
deeply brooding, seek to express a plurality of ideas, a variety
of emotional states. As curator, Donald Kuspit writes in the exhibition
catalogue: “Cristóbal Gabarrón is an extraordinarily
prolific, inventive artist—series follows series, each potentially
extending infinitely, each an impressive tour de force in itself—but
there is one consistent theme in all his work: the lived body and
its emotional vicissitudes. Our changing moods are a kind of feedback
from our bodies to ourselves, even as they feedback, in a kind of
dialectical loop, to our bodies, changing our sense of ourselves”.
Cristóbal Gabarrón was born in the Mediterranean
town of Mula in 1945, near the capital of the region of Murcia.
Gabarron was part of a generation of Spanish artists who sought
to keep alive a spirit of free artistic expression during the repressive
years of the Franco dictatorship. Despite a climate of political,
social and cultural oppression, this group of artists, aware of
the new art movements bourgeoning in the rest of Europe and particularly
the United Sates at the time, broke away from the forces aesthetic
stagnation and embraced the new trends. Against this backdrop, creating
abstract art in the 1950s was something more than adopting an aesthetic
approach; it was rather a social and political commitment to freedom
in all its expressions.
An extensive catalogue (400 pages and 500 photos) accompanies the
exhibition with essays that discuss the many facets of Gabarron’s
oeuvre over four decades. The curator, Donald Kuspit makes a general
overview on “The Body Image in Cristóbal Gabarrón’s
Art”; the independent critic, Barbara Rose, in an interview
with Cristóbal Gabarrón, explores the humanism of
the man and the artist. Critic and art historian, Mark Van Proyen,
analyzes the sculptural works of the artist in Convivencia Now!;
and Peter Frank, Senior Curator of the Riverside Art Museum of Los
Angeles concludes the study with his essay, “The Public Eye:
Gabarrón in the Open.”
Produced by the Chelsea Art Museum, Home of Miotte Foundation in
New York and the IVAM, the Valencian Institute of Modern Art, this
exhibition has been sponsored by Trampolin Group of Companies. The
exhibition dates for New York at the Chelsea Art Museum are from
September 30, 2005 through January 14, 2006. And for Valencia (Spain)
at the IVAM, Valencian Institute of Modern Art from March 27 through
May 28, 2006.
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